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SCOTT BARANCIKAn Orlando lawyer with powerful contacts handles the deal to bring the scientific organization to Florida.
When Gov. Jeb Bush needed someone to negotiate a landmark pact with the Scripps Research Institute, he didn't pick a lawyer out of the Yellow Pages.
After all, $369-million in state money was involved, as was a world-renowned scientific organization. And the legal work would pay as much as $275 an hour. So Bush turned to David Brown, a longtime friend.
The 52-year-old Orlando lawyer is on friendly terms with the powerful, from President Bush to golfer Tiger Woods. His real estate clients include members of the Saudi royal family.
Even among lawyers, Brown is a master at cultivating connections. The best evidence: The Scripps deal might never have happened without his networking skills.
Last spring during a private meeting in Tallahassee, Gov. Bush shared with Brown his determination to jump-start biotechnology development in Florida. So Brown, who is chairman of the law firm of Broad and Cassel, arranged for Bush to meet with Scripps' president in San Diego last July. The visit led to the deal for Scripps, the San Diego nonprofit, to build a branch in Palm Beach County.
Since helping Bush shepherd the $369-million Scripps funding bill through a special session of the state Legislature in October, Brown and his law firm colleagues have been sorting through the details of a formal agreement with Scripps.
Brown said his $275-an-hour rate is deeply discounted; others from his firm are being paid about $125 per hour. As of Jan. 9, he estimated Broad and Cassel, which was founded in Miami and has offices in Tampa and seven other Florida cities, had rung up $100,000 in legal fees.
Marshall Criser Jr., chairman of the corporation Florida created to oversee its partnership with Scripps, recently cited Broad and Cassel for its "outstanding" work on the project. Last week, the Scripps Florida Funding Corp. approved a tentative contract, sending it to Bush and legislative leaders for final review.
Brown rejects the notion that he and his law firm got the work on the Scripps project through political connections, or that its hiring amounted to a state-financed finder's fee for arranging the Florida-Scripps marriage.
"What I brought to this deal was that I understood exactly what it was going to take to satisfy the needs of Scripps, because I'd spent some time with them and I knew what they required," said Brown, whose areas of practice include government relations and large-scale real estate transactions. "I also knew, clearly, the governor and what his demands were going to be on it, and I also had some benefit of a background of putting big transactions together."
Consider the chain of events:
If Brown had not volunteered for former President George Bush's re-election campaign in 1992, he probably would not have been introduced to the president's son Jeb. If Brown had not befriended Jeb Bush and helped him win election as governor in 1998, the lawyer probably would not have been appointed to the Florida Transportation Commission in 1999. Had Brown not been appointed to that nonpaying position, he probably wouldn't have been meeting privately with the governor in Tallahassee last spring, privy to the musings of an officeholder and power broker, when the subject of biotechnology arose.
After that meeting, Brown took the initiative, asking some clients and pharmaceutical industry contacts for help finding a suitable biotech partner for the state. One client, Joe Lewis, the billionaire developer of the Lake Nona and Isleworth properties in Orange County, agreed to set up a meeting between Bush and his good friend, Scripps president Richard Lerner.
As is often true of officeholders and their supporters, Brown's ties to Bush are a blend of the personal and the political.
He has served as Central Florida fundraising chairman for both the governor and his brother, George W. Bush. He secured his reputation as a Bush family intimate in 2002 when he visited Noelle, the governor's daughter, during her brief stay at the Orange County Jail on a drug-related offense.
Brown once hosted Gov. Bush at the exclusive Isleworth Country Club outside Orlando for a round of golf with two neighbors, golf pros Tiger Woods and Mark O'Meara.
As a lawyer representing presidential candidate George W. Bush after the controversial 2000 election, Brown got tossed out of a Volusia County election board meeting for being argumentative.
Having kidded one another about their tastes in neck wear, Brown congratulated Bush with a red, white and blue beaut after the governor's A-Plus education plan was enacted. Bush called it his "lucky tie."
Like other law firms that thrive on their connections in government, Brown's 140-member firm isn't shy about its ability to get things done in Tallahassee.
"Broad and Cassel knows Florida's economy, its history, its people, its businesses and its political leaders," boasts a statement on the firm's Web site. "A keen understanding of how government operates . . . allows us to efficiently represent our clients' issues. In many areas we have been successful in drafting and shaping Florida's laws."
Bush isn't the only Republican in Tallahassee who has turned to Broad and Cassel for help.
Steve Burton, who manages the law firm's Tampa office, was selected by House Speaker Johnnie Byrd to serve as the body's outside counsel. Byrd's office paid Broad and Cassel $579,000 through the first 10 months of 2003 for its work on a single case, a controversial legal battle over the House computer system.
Brown, a workaholic who prefers a desk lamp to the limelight, hasn't let insinuations of political payback distract him.
The lawyer, who is a member of the influential Florida Council of 100 business group, sounds like a true believer when he talks about the Scripps agreement. He says it may be "the best marketing dollars the state will ever spend."
"I've already had people I talk to in New York and the capital markets who are just awed by this deal," he said. "Other companies and other scientific institutes now have Florida on their list of significant places to be for science."
But one episode in the state's pursuit of Scripps underscores Brown's ability to see and seize profitable opportunities, both for his firm and his clients.
Shortly after Bush's get-acquainted meeting with Scripps last July, the institute invited a handful of Florida communities to bid for its proposed branch. Among them was Orange County, which together with the city of Orlando and the University of Central Florida offered Scripps a $220-million package. A key player in the proposal: Brown's client, developer Joe Lewis. The branch would be built on a 500-acre parcel at Lewis' Lake Nona development.
Lewis was not only friends with Lerner, the Scripps chief, but had done business before with key players at Scripps. Tavistock Life Sciences, his biotech venture capital company, has invested millions of dollars in startups involving either Scripps officials or technologies it has patented.
In September, for example, Tavistock and a partner sank a combined $12.5-million into Ambrx Inc., a startup chaired by, and based on research by, Scripps professor Peter Schultz, who would address the Florida Legislature a month later about the Scripps proposal. Tavistock has also invested in CovX Pharmaceuticals, which licenses an antibody technology developed by Lerner, Schultz and another Scripps employee.
So whom did Lewis, an insider in his own right, hire to help package and pitch the Lake Nona bid to Scripps? David Brown.
Orange County ended up losing the bidding war when Scripps chose to locate in Palm Beach County. Brown called the loss proof of the process' fairness - and of the limits of his own influence.
Within about 24 hours, Brown had a new client. Bush hired his longtime friend to help negotiate a deal with Scripps and get it through the Legislature.
"With the selection of West Palm Beach," Brown said, "there was no conflict."
- Times staff writers Lucy Morgan, Steve Bousquet and Bob Harig and researcher Caryn Baird contributed to this report. Scott Barancik can be reached at barancik@sptimes.com
C. David Brown IIAge: 52
Job: chairman, Broad and Cassel law firm
Practice areas: real estate, government relations, land use and environmental law; active in municipal finance
Positions: general counsel, Greater Orlando Aviation Authority; eminent domain counsel, Orlando-Orange County Expressway Authority
Home: Windermere Raised: Palm Beach County
Family: married to Wanda Brown, a Broad and Cassel lawyer; has two children from a prior marriage
Education: Bachelor's degree, University of Florida, 1973; J.D., University of Florida College of Law, 1978
Public service: member, Florida Transportation Commission
- Sources: Broad and Cassel, David Brown, Times research